Tag: history

On this day in history 234 years ago an event occurred which impacted the life of everyone alive today.

The Boston Tea Party has been called the “point of no return” for the birth of democracy. The chain of events which was started by this act of civil disobedience on December 16, 1773 changed the future for the people in every nation on Earth today. This dramatic evening event has long been a target area in the growth of the Family Forest®.

For instance, one of the participants married two of the daughters of Paul Revere, another one of the participants. You can follow their lines of descent to various families, including the Rockefellers.

Many Boston Tea Party descendants are scattered throughout the country today. Wouldn’t it be a great story to tell your grandchildren, if it turns out that you are one of them?

Ken Burnsis a master at utilizing A People-Centered Approach to History® to stimulate people to do good, which is the goal we are also striving to attain with the Family Forest® Project.

After watching his excellent program on PBS called The War , Kristine was motivated to do further research about her Uncle Donald.

Like many other young men and women in The War, Lieutenant Donald Hays Spangler was one of those who went off to serve his country, and never returned.

Kristine’s Uncle Donald, one of her father’s two brothers, was appointed midshipman at the US Naval Academyon July 8, 1938. After but a very brief naval career, he was killed in action on the USS Atlanta off Savo Island at Iron Bottom Sound, Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands on November 13, 1942.

Lieutenant Donald Hays Spangler’s memory now lives on in several other places on the Internet, as the niece he never knew has discovered, and is hereby passing on to her nieces, nephews, and cousins in this Veterans Day tribute.

By shooting the credibility of the one who is delivering the message, members of the media are doing their readers and the public a disservice by casting aspersions on what close investigations will confirm is very high quality work.

According to some very smart and well informed people, such as Mark Humphrys, King Solomon and everyone else from that time period would fall into one of only two possible categories. Each of those individuals is either an ancestor of no one alive today, or an ancestor of everyone alive today.

After a very productive morning of growing the Family Forest®, Kristine and I were aimlessly channel-surfing on our lunch break, until we were captured by a Travel Channel program about some famous castles in England and Scotland. Ever since I discovered that I have ancestors who lived in castles I’ve been captivated by the spellbinding magic of the type of stories and dramatic videography this program was so rich with.

Most of the key people in the stories surrounding many of the famous castles (like Warwick and Edinburgh) which were featured in this particular program, are already in the Family Forest® New World Edition and waiting for visual exploration of their multi-century generation-by-generation family ties.

The person who I was most curious to check on first was Earl Richard Neville, known to history as “The King Maker.” So I typed king maker into the search window of the Family Forest® and he instantly appeared, along with highlights of his life, including the quote that he was “probably the most potent noble in the whole range of English history.”

My curiosity continues with a number of questions. Where did he come from? What is known about his ancestors? Who is he related to? Who are some of his known descendants today?

At some point I expect Hollywood casting directors to discover what an excellent tool Hollywood the Family Forest® is for quickly discovering which actors and actresses are actually connected through family ties to real characters in historical films or programs that are being planned. I also expect that Hollywood PR directors will soon begin discovering the untapped potential of ancestral marketing.

New and exciting discovery opportunities will open up for most people, probably including you, when these three emotionally-attached strongholds of common knowledge are exposed for the falsehoods they are.

Many people have grown up believing that all of their ancestors came from Ireland, or Italy, or Norway, or Greece, etc. This is simply not true, even if all four of your grandparents came from the same place.

You are absolutely related to some famous people, and some of your ancestors were very remarkable people. Some of them were there at key turning points in history, and some of your cousins can be seen on TV.

Following up on Britney Spears’ Jamestown ancestor Richard Pace, I just discovered that we would have been deprived of one of the most loved Hollywood icons if Richard had not done what he did.

According to the ancestral history already digitally mapped out in the Family Forest®, Richard Pace is one of the 11th great-grandfathers of Britney Spears.

According to recorded history, Edward Spalding or Spaulding of Chelmsford, MA and his family survived the Indian massacre at Jamestown before moving to Massachusetts.

Also according to the ancestral history already digitally mapped out in the Family Forest®, Edward Spaulding’s son Benjamin was one of Katharine Hepburn’s 6th great-grandfathers.

If Richard Pace had not survived his planned assassination and gone on to warn the Jamestown Colony, if Edward Spaulding had not survived the Indian massacre to become the father of Benjamin Spaulding, if one of Katharine Hepburn’s ancestors had never been born, would Katharine have never been born? Or would she have been born as someone else?

So one ancestor of Britney Spears was responsible for saving the life on a man who would later become an ancestor of the most Oscar-winning Hollywood actresses of all times, and she would portray one of Britney’s (and also Katharine’s) ancestors.

If one Indian had not disobeyed his Chief, there would have been no Katharine Hepburn, and maybe no Britney Spears (her 10th great-grandfather George Pace was born well before the massacre, and may or may not have been at Jamestown at the time). History pivots on small events.

I browsed through the Family Forest® for cousins who share early 1600’s Stebbins ancestors (only one of a number of his early American immigrant families I could have used) with Matt.

Many common and not so common surnames appeared, such as Adams and Brown and Johnson and Jones and Smith, to Gerbode and Gildersleeve and Kleberg and Sheehan and Wurts.

A number of Matt’s famous and/or prominent Stebbins cousins from the past and present also appeared. They include Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, all of the descendants of the founder of the King Ranch in Texas, President Rutherford B. Hayes, Vice-President Dick Cheney, presidential candidates Howard Dean and Mitt Romney, two-time baseball All-Star Ray Boone and his All-Star descendants, billionaire Warren Buffett, all of the descendants of Hawaiian missionaries Rev. Amos Starr Cooke and Rev. Samuel Chenery Damon, the owners of Kahua Ranch, and Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood.

How many times might you have enjoyed a Hollywood motion picture, and not known that you actually share ancestors with the celebrity star? Certainly some.

A Family Forest® kinship report for Lillian Gish reveals mostly everyday people, including probably many who have been enjoying her movies for years without having any idea that they share ancestors with their famous cousin.

One of Lillian’s relatives is Glenn Close, and she can be seen starting this week in Damages.

Another interesting facet is the relevance of the Common Ancestor column on the chart. Millions of people should be able to quickly recognize one or more of them as their own ancestor.

This means that they are not only a cousin of Lillian Gish, but that they are also a cousin of the person Lillian shares that ancestor with.

So if you spot one of your own ancestors on the chart you will be connected by family ties to at least two of your famous cousins.

I predict that when you discover that you are actually a cousin of Lillian Gish, or Glenn Close, or Richard Gere, or Clint Eastwood, etc., you will also discover that you are magnetically drawn to their movies and/or TV series.